Evidence Clinton Knew About North Korea's Nuclear Violations

Evidence Clinton Knew About North Korea's Nuclear Violations

Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Saturday, Oct. 19, 2002

WASHINGTON – The United States is not as prepared "as it should be” if America has to fight Iraq, North Korea and China all at once. Furthermore, there is evidence that the Clinton administration did know about the North Korean nuclear buildup, despite its protestations to the contrary.

"We are not as ready as we should be,” Frank Gaffney, president and CEO of the Center for Security Policy, said at a briefing under the auspices of the Center for Military Readiness (CMR).

At the same gathering, Adam Mersereau, an attorney and Marine veteran, said the current military had been undermined by three factors:

The weakening of the "warlike ethos” whereby training standards have been compromised to accommodate more women in the military.

The zero-tolerance mentality. Commanders have been so severely punished for military accidents that many of them "are backing off” from necessary training.

The military is too small. In the 1990s, "the military was slashed to the bone.”

"We don’t have the numbers,” said Gaffney, who served as a high official in the Reagan administration’s Defense Department, at the time of a military buildup that helped win the Cold War. The Clinton slashing of military strength, he opined, "is particularly egregious in terms of ships. That is where we most likely would demonstrate presence and begin projecting power in distant places around the world.”

The U.S. is "on a fast track to a 260-ship fleet,” Gaffney observed, "and that’s simply not enough to maintain the kind of global presence that we really need to have in peacetime to deter wars.”

Horrible Scenario

Mersereau had posited a situation where, while the U.S. is fighting Iraq to head off Saddam Hussein’s intent to use chemical and biological warfare against Americans, North Korea attacks South Korea and China decides it’s time for the long-awaited showdown over Taiwan.

"Even one nuclear bomb in the hands of Kim Jong-il is one too many,” Gaffney told the briefing. He noted irony in the fact that former President Jimmy Carter was instrumental in negotiating that 1994 nuclear agreement, and that just days after Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, North Korea admitted it had not lived up to its word.

Word of Dishonor

When the Clinton administration announced the agreement in 1994, more than one person pointed out at the time that the assumption that the militantly Stalinist regime would abide by its terms was based on little more than blind faith.

In a statement issued Friday, David A. Keene, co-chairman of Americans for Missile Defense, declared, "The North Koreans’ persistent eschewing of weapons inspectors undoubtedly raised red flags,” but left-wingers in Congress and the Clinton administration "believed for years that they offered protection.”

Now they admit they have been secretly building a massive arms production program. Given their decades-long record of deceit, added Keene, "is anyone surprised that they couldn’t be trusted?”

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Wendy Sherman, one of her assistants in the Clinton State Department, are now saying they did not know that the North Koreans were lying. They simply assumed the Stalinist nation was abiding by its word, despite experiences with communists, ignoring the fact that it was Lenin, the father of 20th-century communism, who once said treaties were "like pie crusts,” to be broken.

Albright's Not So Bright

Also on Friday, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh produced a speech by House Majority Whip Tom DeLay showing that as far back as 1998, intelligence sources were contradicting Albright’s assertion at the time that the North Koreans were not in violation of the Carter-negotiated treaty.

Way back in 1998, DeLay had called for the suspension of the $4 billion to $6 billion agreement to build two light-water nuclear reactors and to provide other assistance to North Korea until the president certifies that the North Korean government has agreed to cease its efforts to build these weapons and the means to divert them.

Limbaugh commented that Wendy Sherman had "made a buffoon of herself” by insisting the Clinton administration had no reason to believe North Korea was breaking its word, despite warnings from "Defense Intelligence Agency people, CIA people,” as DeLay was reporting in 1998.

"They’re all circling the wagons to protect Clinton,” Limbaugh told his listeners.

And now, North Korea boldly admits it has a nuclear weapons program just as the U.S. is preparing to go to war with Iraq, whose madman dictator prepares nuclear, biological and chemical weapons to attack the free world.

Amplifying on his statement about the need to maintain military strength to deter wars and keep the peace, Frank Gaffney told the CMR briefing: "I am as anxious as anyone to avoid having to fight anyone if it can be avoided. I simply believe that the alternative to fighting, appeasement, is a formula for making things worse.

"If we can deter people from picking a fight with us or trying to exploit [a situation where we are distracted], that is very much to be preferred over having to fight them simultaneously.”

During the Nazi buildup in Europe in the late 1930s, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned that if you fail to confront an aggressor from the vantage point of strength, you may ultimately have to confront an even stronger enemy from the vantage point of relative weakness.

Security analysts believe that is a lesson of history the Clinton administration ignored, as is clear from its refusal to face the North Korean nuclear buildup despite warnings from its own intelligence sources.

As a NewsMax book has documented, this very attitude is Clinton’s "Bitter Legacy.”

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Editor's note:
"CATASTROPHE" Reveals Bill Clinton`s Role in 9/11 - Click Here to find out more